32 years later
I spent May 18, 2012 shooting Mount St. Helens on its 32nd Anniversary of the eruption. I decided to stick around for sunset and see how it looked. Glad I did. The volcano erupted on May 18, 1980 and this place has always intrigued me so experiencing this was the highlight of my trip to Washington State.
In the foreground, 150 feet deep ash buried the Toutle River, forming new lakes, wetlands and rerouting creeks. New channels of the river now cut through the mixture of ash, timber and rock. If I remember correctly, more than 50 people were killed by the blast, some as far away as 15 miles.
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From Wikipedia:
Mount St. Helens is most notorious for its catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980, at 8:32 am PDT,[2] the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States. Fifty-seven people were killed; 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km) of railways, and 185 miles (298 km) of highway were destroyed. A massive debris avalanche triggered by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, caused an eruption, reducing the elevation of the mountain's summit from 9,677 ft (2,950 m) to 8,365 ft (2,550 m) and replacing it with a 1 mile (1.6 km) wide horseshoe-shaped crater.[3] The debris avalanche was up to 0.7 cubic miles (2.9 km3) in volume. The Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument was created to preserve the volcano and allow for its aftermath to be scientifically studied.
As with most other volcanoes in the Cascade Range, Mount St. Helens is a large eruptive cone consisting of lava rock interlayered with ash, pumice, and other deposits. The mountain includes layers of basalt and andesite through which several domes of dacite lava have erupted. The largest of the dacite domes formed the previous summit, and off its northern flank sat the smaller Goat Rocks dome. Both were destroyed in the 1980 eruption.
32 years later
I spent May 18, 2012 shooting Mount St. Helens on its 32nd Anniversary of the eruption. I decided to stick around for sunset and see how it looked. Glad I did. The volcano erupted on May 18, 1980 and this place has always intrigued me so experiencing this was the highlight of my trip to Washington State.
In the foreground, 150 feet deep ash buried the Toutle River, forming new lakes, wetlands and rerouting creeks. New channels of the river now cut through the mixture of ash, timber and rock. If I remember correctly, more than 50 people were killed by the blast, some as far away as 15 miles.
___________________________________________________________________________
From Wikipedia:
Mount St. Helens is most notorious for its catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980, at 8:32 am PDT,[2] the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States. Fifty-seven people were killed; 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km) of railways, and 185 miles (298 km) of highway were destroyed. A massive debris avalanche triggered by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, caused an eruption, reducing the elevation of the mountain's summit from 9,677 ft (2,950 m) to 8,365 ft (2,550 m) and replacing it with a 1 mile (1.6 km) wide horseshoe-shaped crater.[3] The debris avalanche was up to 0.7 cubic miles (2.9 km3) in volume. The Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument was created to preserve the volcano and allow for its aftermath to be scientifically studied.
As with most other volcanoes in the Cascade Range, Mount St. Helens is a large eruptive cone consisting of lava rock interlayered with ash, pumice, and other deposits. The mountain includes layers of basalt and andesite through which several domes of dacite lava have erupted. The largest of the dacite domes formed the previous summit, and off its northern flank sat the smaller Goat Rocks dome. Both were destroyed in the 1980 eruption.